make me some tea:Uchiha_Cycliste: make me some tea: Ow! That was my feelings!: Stratfor dissects Best Korea's crazy and successful plan. Link

Very interesting. That's actually quite sensible from their POV.

it was. thanks for drawing my attention to it.

Stratfor is good stuff. I need to remember to read their writeups whenever international bullshiat is going down.

Interesting how, recently, America and South Korea have wised up to NK's game and it looks like they will no longer play by Kim Joffrey-Un's rules. I can't see how there'll be any multi-party talks now. Even China is tired of North Korea's shiat. Giving into their demands will just continue the cycle, and I keep getting a feeling that everyone with an interest in the situation is sick of this stupid game. Whether this is an "ignore and don't feed the troll until he behaves" moment, or the powers in the region finally want to get it done and over with somehow, remains to be seen.

Weaver95:i'm SO glad we put most of our operational military in the middle east to protect Israel from the consequences of their own stupidity. oooo! plus the GOP slap fight over taxes that ended up with the sequester cuts and impacting military readiness. awesome job guys! thanks!

You know, libs scream and cry about military spending and then scream and cry when people try to cut military spending.

Outshined_One:Welp, if they nuke Seoul, I don't think anyone would keep the US from turning Best Korea into Second Best Korea.

If Best Korea nukes Seoul, China invades Best Korea to keep us from doing it, because the last thing China wants is the US military occupying a country on their border. Regardless, Pyongyang will be rubble in minutes after the attack on Seoul.

All that said, nothing will come of this latest aggression by Best Korea. We are effectively ignoring the petulant children in charge of NK, and letting the UN deal with them.

jaybeezey:Weaver95: i'm SO glad we put most of our operational military in the middle east to protect Israel from the consequences of their own stupidity. oooo! plus the GOP slap fight over taxes that ended up with the sequester cuts and impacting military readiness. awesome job guys! thanks!

You know, libs scream and cry about military spending and then scream and cry when people try to cut military spending.

You can't have it both ways.

Yes, you can have it both ways in the sense that we need to spend smarter.

LincolnLogolas:NewportBarGuy: $20 says if they go for a first strike 90% of their fixed artillery explodes trying to send off the first round.

Nah, any wealth in Best Korea goes to three places: to the Kim Jong family, to monuments dedicated to the Kim Jong family, and to the military. some of their hardware may be old, but it's well maintained. Besides, they've got enough long range artillery pointed at Seoul that they could level it in a day.

They also have a ridiculously large army that doesn't have much else to do but drill, do parades for dear leader, and maintain their 60 year old equipment with obsessive care.

Myria:Kim Jong Un doesn't seem crazy, while his father definitely was. Does he even have control over Best Korea right now?

Let's just give the country to China. They won't let Worst Korea unite with it, so let China have it, and it can be the DMZ between China and Western allies. For all China's problems, wouldn't someone rather be a poor Chinese citizen than a poor Best Korean citizen?

Kim Jong Un is definitely not yet in full control of North Korea. He's working toward that goal, but it's not certain he will achieve it. North Korea is a hard thing to control.

Coastalgrl:From one who is too young to remember, what is the context behind the image? Is that the view looking towards SK?

Serious response: Looks like the road to Basra incident, first gulf war.A bunch of Iraqi soldiers making a run from Kuwait with their ill gotten loot found themselves in the crosshairs of Stormin Normin when he was at his most Stormin.He said words to the effect of "Make them bleed" and, well...

With the Norks, I doubt we'll see anything like that.A nuclear response to a nuclear armed nation is begging for a much bigger tragedy. Even if they were to spill over the border and ransack worst Korea, we'd probably let them wander around for a week or two to regain their senses before coercing their army back over the line.

Going all out against a nuclear player could cost millions of lives.I'd wager the west would absorb thousands of casualties before risking that.

Weaver95:Seriously, if Un had his troops crossed the border tomorrow, or even in the next few months, what part of the sequester would effect our response? Most of our combat troops at this point are actually combat veterans, and I doubt they're going to forget how to fight in the next few months, even if all they did was lay around at home and drink beer (which, I promise you, they aren't doing). Do you think they wouldn't bump up military funding if we had to go balls deep in Korea? Would a war be good? Of course not. I'm just saying, we have the resources to handle it. Only in your little mind are all our troops camped out in Israel, defending those evil zionists you hate so much.

by the time we got our troops in theatre enough to do anything effective, we'd have lost most of south korea, if not all of it. there's even a chance the Norks could hit Japan. for extra giggles, NK could rack off some rounds at Taiwan.

You're not serious, are you? I thought you to have greater situational awareness.

I think it's clear that no one believes North Korea is actually capable of following through on any of the threats it makes, except possibly to Seoul. But I'm starting to wonder if perhaps it would be good -or at least a lesser evil- for North Korea to get a small taste of what would happen if people actually thought its threats were credible. Kim Jong-Un seems to think he's in an Internet flamewar, not a place where words are real. He needs to be disabused of this notion, and quickly.

Oldiron_79:If the US has to nuke Best Korea from orbit I hope China or Russia doesnt go full retard and think we are aimed at them

What would the US do if France let off a nuke in northern Mexico ?It would not be retarded for China to feel they need to respond.The US should stay the fark out of this entire situation (it ALWAYS should have, even back in the 50s)The fatboy lunatic who currently claims to be leader of best korea is no real threat to the US, quit provoking him.

// Living in Beijing China right now so any nuclear attack that is likely to cover me in radioactive poisons would likely piss me off too./ Get the Americans out of Asia, this aint your territory and it is pissing off more than just North Korea.

Slartibartfaster:// Living in Beijing China right now so any nuclear attack that is likely to cover me in radioactive poisons would likely piss me off too./ Get the Americans out of Asia, this aint your territory and it is pissing off more than just North Korea.

/your forgetting the norks threatened the States.// the chinese aren't all that popular locally either.

No Im not forgetting, I realize this and remember it, I just dont think that idiot could actually fulfil his threat.

Japan, South Korea, and China would kick any missile out of the atmosphere fairly quickly (with US technology of course)

Ignore him, he is just an attention whore.

China will participate in the sanctions but they also have a big can of whoop ass they can open up on him if he starts nuking their customer bases. NK is entirely dependent on China for almost everything now, the NK embassy is walking distance from where I am now (obscenely large complex, easy to understand why their people are starving).

The local view is that NK is the brother of China, the short, runty, disobedient shiat of a brother they know they are going to have to give an ass kicking eventually.

Slartibartfaster:Millennium: Kim Jong-Un seems to think he's in an Internet flamewar, not a place where words are real. He needs to be disabused of this notion, and quickly

Give him ropeHe will hang himself

China has this covered.

// agree that this guy needs to get a major slap down but let China do it.

^^ This ^^

If Best Korea attack South Korea, China would annihilate the North and meet the US and SK forces not all that far north of the DMZ. China absolutely, positively does not want a US presence in NK, and they will invade and annex Best Korea to make sure that happens.

We cannot use nukes in the Asian theater without coming to a hair's breadth of war with China, Russia or India, who absolutely don't want nukes going off in their neighborhood, and have the means to respond in kind. Okay, India's ability to respond is limited, but they could make things very difficult for our allies in Japan and SK, if they wanted. Regardless, we can only respond to North Korean aggression with conventional weapons. So we might bomb Pyongyang and all NK military bases into rubble, but China will be doing the brunt of the pacification work. While our forces fight alongside the SK army to push back the NK forces, the Chinese invade and we crush them on two fronts.

It would not surprise me at all if there are already battle plans prepared with SK and China, just in case Best Korea finally makes good on their threats. An understanding, if you will, that crushes NK while respecting Chinese security and limits damage to SK.

MmmmBacon:Slartibartfaster: Millennium: Kim Jong-Un seems to think he's in an Internet flamewar, not a place where words are real. He needs to be disabused of this notion, and quickly

Give him ropeHe will hang himself

China has this covered.

// agree that this guy needs to get a major slap down but let China do it.

^^ This ^^

If Best Korea attack South Korea, China would annihilate the North and meet the US and SK forces not all that far north of the DMZ. China absolutely, positively does not want a US presence in NK, and they will invade and annex Best Korea to make sure that happens.

We cannot use nukes in the Asian theater without coming to a hair's breadth of war with China, Russia or India, who absolutely don't want nukes going off in their neighborhood, and have the means to respond in kind. Okay, India's ability to respond is limited, but they could make things very difficult for our allies in Japan and SK, if they wanted. Regardless, we can only respond to North Korean aggression with conventional weapons. So we might bomb Pyongyang and all NK military bases into rubble, but China will be doing the brunt of the pacification work. While our forces fight alongside the SK army to push back the NK forces, the Chinese invade and we crush them on two fronts.

It would not surprise me at all if there are already battle plans prepared with SK and China, just in case Best Korea finally makes good on their threats. An understanding, if you will, that crushes NK while respecting Chinese security and limits damage to SK.

There's no chance of this ever being a nuclear exchange. Any conflict will be purely conventional and the North will lose and fairly sharpish.

Nobody is nuking anything, certainly no nukes will be used by the use or China. That's simply not going to happen.

Don't forget, in the end, China wants to be the regional power in that part of the world. They want to be the big kid on the block and for that to happen, they need stability.

China doesn't want millions of Korean refugees flowing over its border.China won't appreciate US troops in NK near the border.NK has always used their belligerent crazy talk to get food and other aid.NK cannot feed its population without outside help.SK has plenty of military force available to her if NK decides to get shooty. Even if NK zerg-rushed SK, they have no capacity to resupply. For them, it will be one shot and done.

The interesting bit here is that China has actually signed on to the sanctions. That's new, that has also freaked NK out (seemingly). NK has begun their standard attention whoring, but may have crossed a line. If China cuts off trade, NK may destabilize internally and fizzle out just like their nuclear tests. You may see Chinese boots on the ground in NK within the year as a "peacekeeping" force once the people of NK turn stabby on their leadership.

MmmmBacon:Slartibartfaster: Millennium: Kim Jong-Un seems to think he's in an Internet flamewar, not a place where words are real. He needs to be disabused of this notion, and quickly

Give him ropeHe will hang himself

China has this covered.

// agree that this guy needs to get a major slap down but let China do it.

^^ This ^^

If Best Korea attack South Korea, China would annihilate the North and meet the US and SK forces not all that far north of the DMZ. China absolutely, positively does not want a US presence in NK, and they will invade and annex Best Korea to make sure that happens.

We cannot use nukes in the Asian theater without coming to a hair's breadth of war with China, Russia or India, who absolutely don't want nukes going off in their neighborhood, and have the means to respond in kind. Okay, India's ability to respond is limited, but they could make things very difficult for our allies in Japan and SK, if they wanted. Regardless, we can only respond to North Korean aggression with conventional weapons. So we might bomb Pyongyang and all NK military bases into rubble, but China will be doing the brunt of the pacification work. While our forces fight alongside the SK army to push back the NK forces, the Chinese invade and we crush them on two fronts.

It would not surprise me at all if there are already battle plans prepared with SK and China, just in case Best Korea finally makes good on their threats. An understanding, if you will, that crushes NK while respecting Chinese security and limits damage to SK.

India's really, really far away from Korea. Delhi is closer to Tel Aviv than to Seoul. Dublin, Ireland is closer to Bangor Maine than Delhi to Seoul.